Lotus Teases With a Fuel-Agnostic Two-Stroke Engine

JohnnyBGod writes "Lotus claim to have invented a new, more efficient engine design. The two-stroke, flex-fuel engine can achieve, according to the surprisingly technical press release, 'approximately 10% better [fuel consumption] than current spray-guided direct injection, spark ignition engines.' The engine has a sliding puck arrangement to control its compression ratio, and has direct injection and a wet sump, to eliminate fuel leakage to the exhaust and the need to mix oil with the fuel, two common problems with two-stroke engines. Lotus engineering have released a video explaining the engine's operation."

Comments

Re:What took it all so long??

[bhtooefr]

Blame California's anti-car lobby attacking everything they can. They can't get regular gasoline cars off the roads, because those are too common, so they attack niches, including diesel.

And it affects those of us that live thousands of miles away from California, because whatever they do, the EPA does 5 years later. And, because California is the biggest car market in the world, and 13 other states have signed up to California's emissions standards (which are both misguided and set to California's unique geography,) carmakers either have to meet the ridiculous California emissions standards, or not sell to some of their biggest markets.

The emissions controls on the TDI, required to meet California (and now EPA, actually) standards cost $3-5k on top of the cost of everything else. (Yes, the TDI is optioned like a high-spec gas model. Options cost automakers almost nothing, and are a good way to hide things like expensive emissions controls. VW makes a LOT more on a high-spec 2.5 or 2.0T gas Jetta than they do on a TDI.)

Oh, and everything that has to be done to meet emissions... means that the thing gets about 20 MPG less than it would without the emissions controls - 60 instead of 40 MPG, on the highway.

Re:10% improvement isn't that much

[cpotoso]

Where did you get that??? Case in point: a significant portion of cars in Brasil are ethanol-based. Not from corn but from sugar cane. This started in the late-70's and is still going strong.

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I really fail to see how you could have modded-up to 5 "insightful", shows how ignorant the average slashdotter can be :-)

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